Hyderabad: Cyberabad Police busts data theft racket; info of 66.9 crore individuals at stake

The accused allegedly had the data of students of Byjus and Vedantu, organisations that offer courses to students from various streams, the police said, according to the report.

Further, he also held the data of 1.84 lakh users of cab-hailing apps of eight metro cities and data of 4.5 lakh salaried workers of six cities and Gujarat state, the police said.

He was also in possession of customer data of major organisations like GST (Pan India), RTO (Pan India), Amazon, Netflix, Youtube, Paytm, Phonepe, Big Basket, BookMyShow, Instagram, Zomato, Policy Bazar, Upstox, etc, said the report.

According to police, the accused, identified as Vinay Bhadwaj, was operating through a website “InspireWebz” at Faridabad, Haryana, said the report.

He was selling database to the clients through cloud drive links and procured databases from Amer Sohail and Madan Gopal.

“Some of the important data held by the accused includes the data of defence personnel, government employees, PAN card holders, students data of 9th, 10th, 11 & 12th standard, senior citizens. Delhi electricity consumers, D-MAT account holders, mobile numbers of various individuals, NEET students, high net worth individuals, insurance holders, credit card and debit card holders,” the Cyberabad Police said.

The police have confiscated two mobile phones and two laptops from the accused.

“Data of NEET students with their names, father's name, mobile number and their residence was also found with these accused. PAN Card database containing sensitive information on income, email ids, phone numbers, address etc was also found. Data of Government employees containing information on their name, mobile number, category, date of birth etc was also found,” the police said.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crimes) Cyberabad Police Kalmeshwar Shingenavar said notices to concerned organisations will be served for violation of IT Act, the report stated.